Chapter 12
I removed Agatha from every household authority she still held.
She called it betrayal.
I called it accuracy.
No kitchen access.
No staff instructions.
No schedule information.
No authority over vehicles, rooms, meals, or family gatherings.
The organization was different.
She had no formal rank anymore.
Only influence.
That ended too.
Older relatives were informed that any instruction from Agatha represented Agatha.
Not me.
That sentence mattered.
For years, people obeyed her because they assumed she spoke through me.
No longer.
She looked at me across the council table.
“You’re stripping your own mother for a woman.”
I stared.
“My wife.”
“Exactly.”
I almost smiled.
“And my daughter.”
Silence.
“And my unborn child.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You’re choosing them over the family.”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“I’m choosing them as family.”
That distinction destroyed her argument.
She had built an imaginary competition.
Organization versus wife.
Blood versus marriage.
Tradition versus children.
I refused the categories.
Maren did not stand outside my family asking me to abandon it.
May you like
She was inside it asking not to be treated like an animal.
The fact Agatha saw those demands as equivalent told me everything.
